Yuma

Friday, December 7, 2007 - Saw my friend Rick at Starbucks yesterday and we chatted for a couple hours. An NFL game was on that evening, so I headed to my trusty Ole's Tavern for a couple brews; saw Steve there again. For some reason I decided to leave at halftime, getting me back to the campsite by 7:30 or so. I then decided to go ahead and pack up what I didn't need that night. I was asleep by 8:00..

My tent woke me up at some point during the night as the wind had collapsed it ontop of me, just like at Half Moon Bay a month or so ago. The winds were pretty strong and it was starting to rain as well. I figured it was probably almost time to wake up anyway, so looked at my watch and noticed it was only 10:30pm. Crap. Tried to go back to sleep but woke up about every hour when the wind would get ticked off and crumple my tent. It was raining harder and harder by the hour. Finally by 2:30am I had to make that God awful decision of bailing; my tent was permanently caving in on itself and rain was now starting to rush into the tent. About 30 minutes of hauling stuff to my car and packing up my tent and I'm in my car at 3:00am debating what to do.. There's no real point in just sitting here until 6:00 waiting for Starbucks to open, I'm leaving today anyway so I decided to just book it to Arizona and find a starbucks there.

I've never driven in fog this thick.. There weren't a lot of cars on the road at 3:00 in the morning, but the ones that were out weren't going faster than 20mph, and for good reason. For about 45 minutes there I couldn't even see off the side of the road; I had no idea if mountains were next to me, forest, desert, etc.. A strange feeling. The fog then got even worse. Going only 20mph, all I could see on the highway at this point were the little white markers in the middle lane, and at that I could only see the ones a few feet ahead of my car. Then the fog got even worse. For a short time there I couldn't even see the white markers 3 or 4 feet away from my car. And then, nearly instantly, it was all gone and I was presented with a beautiful desert sunrise.

So I made it to Yuma, AZ by 6:00am. I found a starbucks and when I pulled up the internet, I noticed that one of the top 5 world headlines on MSN was about severe storms in southern california; potential mudslides and flash-floodings. There have been many times on this trek that I've felt somehow protected, and it couldn't be more appropriate to have that feeling once again on my last day in Cali.

Arizona desert sunrise